here they talked of revolution, here it was they lit the flame

[initiates]

Date: October 1st
Location: The Observatory.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Observatory for the show of the year. Initial briefings are very brief this time around, and that Greeter just won't stop crying.
Warnings: new confused people and old sad people??

Your arrival here has been very unceremonious. One second you were somewhere else, and now, very suddenly, your feet hit the glowing white of the Transporter pad, and you're here. You aren't alone, either. There's a crowd of others around you, each seeming just as bewildered, angry, or confused as you might feel. At the head of the group is a woman in purple robes, with eyes red as if she'd just finished crying. She hurries over a quick overview of your intended purpose here, and gives direct answers when asked for them, but to most things she simply shows you how to access the tablet you've just been given. There, you can find the history of this place and a record of what your new cohorts have experienced — although it won't have Network access for another 8 hours. Someone stands on hand to give you a weapon, and though the armory is now greatly reduced, you should be able to find something to suit you.

You're shepherded down a walkway tunnel and into the Observatory, where you will find screens mounted on three sides of the wide room. The only lighting comes from dull red emergency lights, and the scenes of a dreary, rainy city from various cameras up on the screens; the largest of the screens opens up to a view of Earth from a good distance away -- this one isn't a screen at all, you might realize, but a window. As you watch, all screens in the room fill with light, impossibly bright. It consumes the buildings, the people, everything. There is no sound played, perhaps mercifully, only that white light -- and then nothing.

Through the large window, there's a pinprick of light over one of the landmasses on the blue planet. It grows to a tiny blossom and then dies away, but a cloud begins to mushroom outward in the same spot. It pushes the natural clouds out of the way, claiming that small portion of the world and wrapping it in a uniform gray.

Strings of numbers begin to fill the blanked out screens as the base's AI begins collecting data and calculations, but the show seems to be over. You're free to explore the base, visit and use any of the VR rooms, or discover your new room and roommates, but try not to step out of any airlocks if oxygen is a requirement for your system.

Welcome to the moon base, with front row seats to the grave of Exsilium.

[[ooc; reminder! The Network will be down for 8 hours after the wave of new Transports.]]

Comments

[fullmeasure]

[Mike, at least, looks amused. Which is rare for him, since it's always all business around him]

You don't have to do that. [he shrugs a shoulder] And "Master Pinkman" is a good forty years younger than me. Of course he'll be pleased by a pretty girl kissing him in greeting.

[ensorceler]

[ Anne holds her fingertips to her lips as if to restrain another laugh, and she shakes her head. ]

By many, I should think, and he would not be found wanting. Mayhap you are necessary after all, for now we too are friends and you may keep all of the other "pretty girls" far, far away from him.

[fullmeasure]

Is that so?

[babysitter, bodyguard . . . now this. Mike's life was never not interesting]

I'll do my best to try.

[ensorceler]

[ His humoring is quaint, and familiar to her despite his dead-panned execution. It does bring her comfort, however small, and her sigh is light as she nods, stepping away and giving him his space once more. ]

Though I think a kiss is not what would bring him joy now. For all here, our souls are as adrift as we in this deepest of voids. You have entered our strange new abode at the saddest of times.

They wished for us to leave all of them.

[fullmeasure]

So I've been told.

[it's angering and upsetting what happened, but Mike's new, and in a way, he hasn't had to experience everything they've had to. It makes it easier to keep neutral about it]

Although, if I know Jesse, I think your company would at least do him a great deal of good.

[ensorceler]

I would wonder at such a claim now, for I may I have only brought him more burdens and misery.

[fullmeasure]

How so?

[ensorceler]

We did not much like them telling us to abandon our peoples, Master Pinkman and I. But I was the one to ask for his help in harboring the child, and now I am not to know if this has helped or hurt him more for it.

[ She can't even say the same for herself right now. Plus now they're stuck with a kid, whoops. ]

[fullmeasure]

[whoops indeed]

If I know the kid, he's gonna hurt no matter what. [he shrugs] It's how he is.

[ensorceler]

[ She thinks on what Jesse is said, and that he's hurt people. That's not something to bring up to a fake friend she just met. ]

I wish it were other. My heart aches as his does, and yet our pain cannot compare to that of the boy's now in our care.

[fullmeasure]

I doubt it could. [but it's not said harshly; almost gentle] Even if it's fixed, which is what I keep hearing is going to happen.

[ensorceler]

Fixed. Fixed?

[ The look she offers him is incredulous, bordering on offended. Deeply. But it's barely restrained, for the sake of the public and her new friend. It feels like none of them understand, no matter how plainly she says it. Or maybe she just never will understand. ]

Mine own eyes saw what they saw. The peoples there felt terror and now they are no more. No matter how they say of...time travel, how can that ever be fixed. What happened will never go away, they will merely make it different. And if so, then whatever is the point of this war? If one can always go back in time to changer matters of state, of religion, of countless lives, then those blasted creations ought to be forever terminated just as my homeland was this day, else this will never end.

[fullmeasure]

[Mike isn't offended, more surprised than anything she's able to keep herself as restrained as he is. He holds up his hand defensively]

[ensorceler]

[ When Anne wants to rant, she can rant. And had he gone on, she might have let loose. As it is, his deference seems to smack her down quicker than any argument could, and she is swift to lower her eyes and chin somewhat in a submissive gesture of her own. No matter what, she must always remember how she appears in public and to others. ]

Forgive me, it is hardly my place to lecture you in such worldly matters beyond my ken.

[fullmeasure]

It's fine. I misspoke.

[ensorceler]

You have been brought in during the most turbulent of times, and here I stand telling you what is what like I am the elder and you the child. Hardly so!

[ Don't hate her Jesse's fake dad bodyguard, she just can't have that. ]

You must still be in a shock of your own, would you not like to sit? I have learned coffee to be popular among Americans. Are you any different in this fashion?

[fullmeasure]

[Anne pls. Mike just sighs, though there's no annoyance it. He shakes his head]

If I offend you, Anne, then you've got every right to tell me what's what, elder or not.

[though the coffee comment gets him to twitch a grin] And no, I'm not any different when it comes to coffee.

[ensorceler]

[ Wow. In some ways she is baffled by future men and the bullshit they say. Right right. Equal rights...or something. Everything she has wanted and then only teases at now that it's available. ]

How good! I fear there to be no cafe as as they say, but there is a cafeteria and it most certainly has a coffee machine. It does not taste as grand as it did when I first discovered it on Exsilium, but I have some chocolate within my belongings that would transform it into a...mocha?

[ ALL THESE ALIEN FUTURE WORDS but she's owning it aw yeah. ]

[fullmeasure]

I think that's how it works.

[she IS owning it, Mike's impressed. And amused. No wonder Jesse liked her]

[ensorceler]

[ Yes yes, a quick learner! She looks only slightly smug at his approval, but is quick to subdue it once again in the wake of disaster. No matter how much she plays and talks, every few minutes she will glance around and remember where they were and what just occurred. Each time that happens she feels the air sucked right out of her and out into space, and there is only a slight pause in regaining it before she is to continue.

Anne will lead when moving to walk, but only slightly, careful to keep such a step to his left that it appears he could be leading in effect. ]

I have personally come to enjoy it with ginger...though I think there to be none of that here.

[fullmeasure]

[Mike lets her pick the pace, hands shoved in his pockets as he follows. Here he is, with a queen of England, hunting down coffee. Never in a million years would he have thought things would lead to this]

I can't say I've tried it like that.